Liberty Hill Foundation

The California-based Liberty Hill Foundation facilitates the transfer of donor-advised funds from wealthy benefactors to a host of leftist groups and causes. It was established in 1976 by wealthy scions Larry Janss, Anne Mendel, Win McCormack, and Sarah Pillsbury, who were inspired by the writings of the socialist novelist Upton Sinclair to do whatever they could to radically transform American society, which they perceived as a bastion of class inequality and exploitation. This Foundation focuses its philanthropy primarily on grassroots community organizations it perceives to be working for "social and racial equality, environmental sustainability, economic justice, and shared social responsibility" in Los Angeles. It favors organizations that base their tactics on the confrontational strategies outlined by the famed organizer Saul Alinsky. Torie Osborn, who has been a social activist since the 1960s, joined the Liberty Hill Foundation in 1997 and is currently its Executive Director. Before coming to Liberty Hill, she was the Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C.